Jackson partners for features

Action Jackson LLC to produce 3-5 pics per year

Emmett/Furla Films and Cheetah Vision Films have partnered with Georgia-based entrepreneur Richard Jackson to produce and co-finance three to five pictures per year.

Jackson has formed Action Jackson Films and kicks off the partnership with a commitment to fully fund “The Gun,” a drama scripted by Cheetah Vision partner Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson (no relation to Richard Jackson), who will star with Val Kilmer. Jesse Terro is set to direct the picture, which begins production next month.

Emmett/Furla partners Randall Emmett

and George Furla are producing with Curtis Jackson and Richard Jackson.

Richard Jackson is described as an entrepreneur with investments in companies involved in health care and finance.

Emmett, who is partnered with Furla in Emmett/Furla Films banner and with 50 Cent in Cheetah Vision, said that he met Richard Jackson during a “high stakes card game in Las Vegas.” They formed a friendship that led Jackson to ante up for the film venture.

In “The Gun,” Curtis Jackson and Kilmer play friends whose loyalties are tested when they get caught up in the world of illegal gun dealing. Pic will shoot in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Hannibal Pictures is handling foreign sales. Chris Lighty, Justin Holochek and Richard Rhionda are executive producers.

The script grew out of the rapper-actor’s curiosity about how guns go from being manufactured and shipped for legal use to somehow “falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Curtis Jackson said. “It’s a socially conscious theme that people aren’t paying attention to.”

Jackson said his goal in forming Cheetah Vision with Emmett was to create star vehicles — and get the chance to produce and write. This is the first of three feature scripts Curtis Jackson has written, and he feels he is getting the hang of a form much different than songwriting.

“When you write a song, you need to say it in three minutes or it is overkill, but I like creating stories and going in depth with characters,” he said.

Jackson will follow “The Gun” with the Cheetah Vision-produced drama “Jekyll and Hyde,” starring with Forest Whitaker in the Abel Ferrara-directed film, which Warner Bros. will distribute domestically.

Emmett said the link to financier Richard Jackson will boost both production companies. EFF maintains its first-look deal with Millennium Films.

Emmett/Furla Films is a producer on the Werner Herzog-directed “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which stars Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Kilmer. Pic opened at Toronto and hits theaters Nov. 20.